Deputy AG suggested recording president
Report: Deputy AG sought allies to apply 25th Amendment
Memos show Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested last year that he secretly record President Donald Trump to expose the chaos consuming the administration.
WASHINGTON — Memos written by Andrew McCabe when he was the acting FBI director say Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested he secretly record his talks with President Donald Trump and that Rosenstein discussed possibly trying to remove Trump from office, according to people familiar with the matter.
The account, first reported by the New York Times, paints Rosenstein as so concerned in May 2017 in the wake of Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey that he contemplated secretly recording conversations with the president. He also initiated discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment, which details how the Cabinet can decide whether a president is no longer able to discharge the duties of the office, one of the McCabe memos said.
The revelations immediately prompted speculation that Trump might seize on the new information to fire Rosenstein. The deputy attorney general oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Speaking at a rally in Springfield, Mo., on Friday evening, Trump said, “Look at what’s being exposed at the Department of Justice and the FBI. We have great people in the Department of Justice … but there’s a lingering stench and we’re going to get rid of that, too.”
The saga features two of the president’s biggest targets for public criticism, McCabe and Rosenstein, both of whom he blames for an investigation he calls a “witch hunt.” In this instance, McCabe’s memos offer an extraordinary account of Rosenstein’s thinking at a difficult time in the Justice Department and could could give Trump fresh ammunition to move to oust Rosenstein.
McCabe was fired this year. Rosenstein denied the account. “The New York Times’ story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
In a second statement hours later, Rosenstein said: “I never pursued or authorized recording the president and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the president is absolutely false.”
The president asked advisers Friday if he should fire Rosenstein, and some of those around Trump sought to sway him not to make any decision Friday night. During those discussions, the president said he did not trust Rosenstein or McCabe, the adviser said.
People familiar with the 2017 discussions — and the memos written about the discussions — offered wildly divergent accounts of what was said and what was meant.
Most of the key discussions took place on May 16. Comey had just been fired, and his deputy, McCabe, like many in the FBI, was deeply upset about that action by Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
McCabe’s notes from May 16 assert that both the recording and 25th Amendment remarks occurred during discussions on that day. McCabe’s senior counsel, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, also took notes of the discussions that largely track McCabe’s in sequence and import but are more detailed.
According to other attendees at the meeting, the mention of secretly recording Trump occurred in a different context from the one McCabe and Page described. According to these people, McCabe was pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president.
During a conversation about how one would attempt to record any outlandish statements made by the president in private, Rosenstein responded with what one person described as a sarcastic comment along the lines of, “What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?”
That person insisted the statement was not meant seriously.
But a key discrepancy between the contradictory accounts revolves around the assertion by some that there were two key meetings that day attended by slightly different groups of officials — which could explain why McCabe’s account differs at times not just from that of Justice Department officials but also from Page’s.